Welsh Liberal Democrat Assembly Member for South Wales West - Visit my main website at www.peterblack.wales

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Branding Wales

When the First Minister announced that he was getting rid of the WDA name and logo following the merger of this organisation with the Welsh Assembly Government, he was insistent that the brand that we are selling is "Wales". We can all therefore be excused being a little confused this morning at the news in the Western Mail that a secret strategy has been adopted to drop the word "Wales" from the titles of our national museums.

Robyn Gwyn, director of communications at the National Museums and Galleries of Wales, explained the new approach, "We have been looking at the way we brand and promote our museums very carefully in recent months, and had been preparing to go public in November. "Over the summer we have been testing ideas with focus groups involving visitors and 41 members of staff. The response we have had is very positive.

"Overall we hope to have a clearer identity for the seven museums that we run. In Welsh, the family of institutions will be known as Amgueddfa Cymru and in English, National Museums Wales.

"People who are not Welsh- speakers are becoming increasingly familiar with Cymru as the name of the country and we would encourage people to use it.

"In terms of the individual museums, we believe there is no longer any need to have 'Wales' or 'Welsh' in the title. We are conscious of the fact that 30% of the people in Wales are not Welsh and we believe it is more appropriate that the term 'National' should be used.This is an interesting argument of course and it does have merits. The issue though is how we can use our museums to sell Wales to visitors abroad when individually, they do not identify themselves as belonging here. Some consistency would be nice.

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